Whats the big deal?
Windows 10 is just fine... let it install and save the "energy" for more important things in life..

It may be a good OS, but "the big deal" with me is being coerced and/or tricked into installing it by the goons at Microsoft.

 

It may be a good OS, but "the big deal" with me is being coerced and/or tricked into installing it by the goons at Microsoft.

Has anybody mentioned the spyware?

 

Has anybody mentioned the spyware?

But it is the Most. Secure. Ever.

 

But it is the Most. Secure. Ever.

Every incarnation of Windows is the, "most secure ever".

 

Sure. All I had to give up was every feature on my Canon MFP4150 printer except one sided page printing and MSPaint.
I just quit printing 2-sided pages, scanning paper pages, optical character recognition, and making small schematic drawings.
Not doing those things saves me a lot of time.

I am detecting sarcasm.

 

I am detecting sarcasm.

Shhh! Don't say that in public. Joeyd worked very hard to get my printer to print anything at all.
I have nothing but praise for joeyd and Linux.

 

No system is ever the most secure ever. Any system, from a carefully crafted restricted viewpoint can be said to be impenetrable. But the truth is any and all uses of information processing has some Achille's Heel.

Take Credit Card readers. I'd be surprised if I was wrong to say that most or many are running a Linux variant. We trust our finances to them every day. But they are being hacked. Your online financial records? We use them every day... (Maybe not all of us). They are encrypted, systematic, protected and can be defeated by DNS poisoning and a man in the middle attack. Or by certificate spoofing.

IMHO, information processing is an integral part of our lives and culture. Any presumption of privacy exists no longer, if reasonably viewed. Unless you want to become a survivalist, cut off from all electronic communications, deal in an increasingly archaic form of barter, never register for anything, do not communicate with the government - in short become a 70s survivalist - your life is an open book.

 

No system is ever the most secure ever. Any system, from a carefully crafted restricted viewpoint can be said to be impenetrable. But the truth is any and all uses of information processing has some Achille's Heel.

Take Credit Card readers. I'd be surprised if I was wrong to say that most or many are running a Linux variant. We trust our finances to them every day. But they are being hacked. Your online financial records? We use them every day... (Maybe not all of us). They are encrypted, systematic, protected and can be defeated by DNS poisoning and a man in the middle attack. Or by certificate spoofing.

IMHO, information processing is an integral part of our lives and culture. Any presumption of privacy exists no longer, if reasonably viewed. Unless you want to become a survivalist, cut off from all electronic communications, deal in an increasingly archaic form of barter, never register for anything, do not communicate with the government - in short become a 70s survivalist - your life is an open book.

This is no excuse, though, to use the operating system family with the single worst security record in the history of operating systems.

 

And last I read, it is a leased license, not a purchased license. That means the lease rate can go up annually and MS can require, rather than suggest that you to install whatever "update" it sees fit to install on your PC. What if MS decides to inactivate all Adobe programs on your PC? What will you do about that? Impossible? Heck no. Just look at the history of Netscape.

John

 

This is no excuse, though, to use the operating system family with the single worst security record in the history of operating systems.

You're just not going to let go of this, are you?
@cmartinez Get joey a cartoon along the lines of, "I refuse to accept the reality of this world and I demand that it change to what I think is right!"

 

@joeyd999 What hard, cold, statistics can you cite to explain your claim? It's not that I disagree with your belief; just have a hard time understanding the environment in which it was formed

 

I am waiting for MS to take the same road GM took, except this time I don't own MS bonds. Remember when Mr. Roger Smith (GM CEO) said, America will buy whatever we build? Well, the Japanese proved him wrong in a big way.

John

 

@joeyd999 What hard, cold, statistics can you cite to explain your claim? It's not that I disagree with your belief; just have a hard time understanding the environment in which it was formed

I already questioned his sanity. You're checking his childhood?
LOL!

 

You're just not going to let go of this, are you?
@cmartinez Get joey a cartoon along the lines of, "I refuse to accept the reality of this world and I demand that it change to what I think is right!"

Mmmmm... I don't know man, is this one more or less what you had in mind?

​

 

Mmmmm... I don't know man, is this one more or less what you had in mind?

I was thinking about your present avatar with different words.

 

I am waiting for MS to take the same road GM took,

Too late. They already did. I'm waiting to see who's going to put them out of business with a convenient OS that has drivers for whatever you need, no bloatware, no spyware, no government back doors...I guess I ran off the end of the tracks that time.

 

If nobody uses it why would you want to hack it?

 

@joeyd999 What hard, cold, statistics can you cite to explain your claim? It's not that I disagree with your belief; just have a hard time understanding the environment in which it was formed

I can't point to a particular study, although I know I've read many. His comment didn't shock me at all. I thought it was common knowledge amongst those who lived with computers over the last three decades.

Don't buy the canard that nobody targeted Macs because they were a smaller target. That's been debunked many times.

 

"I can't point to a particular study, although I know I've read many."

A very convincing argument.

I feel my original post was misunderstood, even before I asked for statistics. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is secure. Every single &#$! piece of code has a vulnerability. Whether it is Windows or Linux. I can't point to a specific study, but this is coming from someone who has worked with computers for almost five decades. Let's say Linux is more secure. Can you say that every program which was written and runs on Linux is as secure? How about Apache running on Linux? Look at here. I am picking on Linux as it is often presented as the most secure, but as I have said - no code is secure. Apple? How about Layer 3 and 7 firewalls... Is their code secure? Or are there an endless stream of patches for those as well? IDS/IPS? Embedded systems - are they secure and never need patching?

I have seen and secured a multi-faceted 24x7x365 e-commerce web site. Linux systems running XEN virtual Windows machines running the web site on Apache with a HA Oracle backend on Unix. Two layers of redundant, warm failover firewalls (for a total of 4) were used, along with dual Application firewalls. Redundant front-end routers and redundant switches. A lot of code to maintain and audit for compliance. But it has never been breached and has had 99.999% uptime (inclusive of maintenance). And, gasp, the major servers are running Windows!

My point being is that all code is insecure. We are in a race to keep ahead of the hackers and crackers and sometimes we lose.

 

My point being is that all code is insecure. We are in a race to keep ahead of the hackers and crackers and sometimes we lose.

I'd say that Windows is more vulnerable simply because there are far more microsoft hackers out there that hate what that OS represents. And Linux has such a small base of users that they won't even bother writing malicious code for it .... yet